Just who or what is this Republican "establishment"?

Still unhealthily fixated on the US Republican primaries, I got to wondering just who or what this Republican establishment (or, increasingly, the capitalized Republican Establishment) actually is that I keep reading about, and that I talked about in a recent post on this very blog. I've a suspicion that many other people are probably in the same boat. This "establishment" seems to be a very faceless and protean entity, but an article in today's Globe and Mail has helped me, at least to some extent, understand what it meant mean.
We've all been reading about how the Republican establishment has been at first angry at non-establishment upstarts like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and then concerned, even worried, about Trump's continued domination in the polls. More recently, it has been more like resignation and denial, particularly as the only establishment candidate in the Republican primaries, Marco Rubio, has continued to fade. It's more a case of looking to how to get the party back after the election, not how to save it.
But what, then, IS this establishment?
Eric Andrew-Gee's article defines it as "a loose nexus of people with a stake in the fortunes of the Republican Party [who] still try to shape its agenda and strategies". That might still sound unavailingly vague and woolly, but it gives something of the flavour of the beast. That description would include most mainstream Republican politicians, current and past (heavy-hitters like Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have recently come out strongly against Trump); mainstream voters (there's that key word "mainstream" again); Super PACs that support the traditional Republican values of small government and free-market economies, but that also have a preference for dignified and statesmanlike behaviour in politics, and that care about the world's perceptions of the USA; and last, but far from least, the policy wonks who are at least nominally responsible for setting the rules, policies and campaign activities of the party as a whole, particularly the Republican National Committee.
Essentially, this amounts to what one might call Republican traditionalists, those who want to continue with the politics-as-usual that has seen the party enjoy substantial electoral success over the decades. They are also people who see extremists like Trump and Cruz - whether in the realm of immigration policy or religion - as a threat to the traditional order, and to the prospects of the party, and America itself, continuing to be successful and respected on the national and international stages.
Indeed, they are what one might even call "sensible" or "thoughtful" Republicans - however much one may disagree with their beliefs - as opposed to the impulsive, extreme and irrational wing represented by blood-and-thunder sensationalists like Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz.

Ontario forges ahead with investment in competitive renewables

After what has felt like something of a retrenchment in recent months, Ontario is once more forging ahead with renewable energy investment.
As reported in the business section of the paper, Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has announced 16 contracts with 11 different companies to build 5 new wind turbine projects, 7 solar projects, and 4 hydroelectric projects, for a grand total of 455 megawatts of new power capacity.
These are relatively modest additions to generating capacity in the scheme of things, as the province is not really in need of much new capacity at the moment, but it is all part of the gradual shift towards clean renewable energy.
As a mark of how renewable power has come of age recently, though, these are not government price set projects, but competitive contracts awarded to those promising to sell power for the lowest price. Gone is the need to for the old Feed-In Tariff program for these kinds of large-scale projects (although I am more than happy to be still benefitting from those myself). The cost of wind and solar has fallen dramatically in recent years, so that they are now competitive on their own merits.
Finally, renewables go mainstream.

Maybe some native communities are just not sustainable

Indigenous suicides are in the Canadian news again, after reports from Pimicikamak Cree Nation (also known as Cross Lake) in northern Manitoba. In this isolated community of about 6,000 souls, some 500 kilometres north of Winnipeg, there have been six suicide deaths in the last three months, and another 140 have either attempted or threatened to kill themselves in just the last two weeks. 170 high school students are currently on suicide watch. It seems like a case of mass hysteria almost worthy of 17th century Salem.
It is an unconscionable situation for any developed country, and one that apparently plays out (on a less dramatic scale) in many northern indigenous communities throughout Canada. As usual, the blame has been laid on poor conditions and poorer prospects. Unemployment in the community is at 80% and, as in many northern settlements, the housing stock is poor, educational and medical facilities are substandard, there are large numbers of children in state care, and there is a perceived lack of youth recreational facilities.
Setting aside the issue of youth recreational facilities (I didn't have access to any "facilities" growing up, and millions of other kids in small communities further south seem to manage to amuse themselves, although I probably won't make myself any friends by pointing that out), these are serious issues that need speedy resolution, and the current government has committed itself do doing just that.
But, as has been repeatedly shown in the past, just throwing money at the problem is not going to solve it. Millions of dollars have been spent on these small northern communities in recent decades. Some of them have managed to use this money to pull themselves up; some have frittered and embezzled the money away (not a very politically correct observation either, but well-attested); some have just continued to molder away regardless.
So, it occurs to me to wonder - and here I am definitely courting outrage - should there even be an isolated community 500km north of Winnipeg if it appears to be completely unsustainable? Yes, I'm sure some elders will say that it is their ancestral homeland and "sacred", but has anyone even asked the majority of the population? Call me cynical, but somehow I doubt that a great deal of hunting and trapping gets done there these days, and some towns that may have been viable historically may not be now.
I'm not suggesting that the whole community be razed or anything like that, just that it could be maintained as a "sacred" homeland for the band members to visit whenever they like. They could go off and do the hunting and trapping thing for a while, organize a sweat lodge, or whatever. But they would not be stuck there for the rest of the year. In between times, they could live in Winnipeg or Portage La Prairie or wherever, earn a living like anyone else, and benefit from modern conveniences and facilities, and really not be any the less "native" for it, it seems to me.
Now, maybe all that is incredibly culturally insensitive of me, I don't know. As a transplanted European with no religion and no racial hang-ups of my own, it is perhaps too easy for me to make such sweeping suggestions. But it just seems that an awful lot of things are just verboten and not mentioned when these matters are discussed, mired as we are in the white man's guilt.
Frankly, though, the system as it stands is just not working for many native people, and I think we need to be exploring some more radical solutions. As I see it, these people are human first and native second (and probably Canadian third), and their basic human rights should take priority.

Where you live dictates what you buy, but it's all completely random anyway

Every Thursday morning, as I drive to my squash game, Terry O'Reilly introduces the always-interesting Under the Influence program on CBC Radio, in which he deconstructs the all-pervading advertising industry. The repeated refrain on today's show was "Where you live dictates what you buy", and among other things it presented a bunch of fascinating factoids about the Canadian provinces and US states and cities that spend most on various different consumer goods and services.
For example, did you know:

• Yukon and Northwest Territories buy far and away the most beer per capita in Canada, and Ontario buys the least. But, although over 50% of the alcohol bought in Canada is beer, its market share has been gradually giving way to wine and spirits since 2004. Quebec is by far Canada's biggest wine consumer, followed by British Columbia, with Saskatchewan buying the least wine. The Northwest Territories and Yukon consume the most liquor, closely followed by Newfoundland and Labrador, while Quebec consumes the least. Overall, though, Quebec drinks the most alcohol, and Price Edward Island the least, and Canadians as a nation drink about 50% more alcohol per year than the average world citizen. In the USA, New Hampshire has the highest per capita beer consumption, followed by North Dakota and Montana. New Hampshire also consumes the most spirits, followed by Washington D.C. and Delaware. Washington D.C. consumes the most wine, followed (perhaps unexpectedly) by Idaho, and then - you guessed it - New Hampshire (the "Live Free Or Die" state).
• British Columbia is the number one Canadian province for the purchase of luxury cars. In Toronto, status is more likely to be expressed though expensive houses, and Toronto is now the world's fastest growing market for luxury home sales of over $3 million dollars, ahead of wealthier cities like New York, London and Paris. In New York, on the other hand, where car ownership is not such a big deal and real estate is at a huge premium, the big status symbol is luxury watches (it buys 171% more luxury watches than the national average, and no other state comes close). In Boston, the status symbol is tuition to private schools; in Dallas, it is home décor; in San Francisco it is club memberships; etc.
• Women in Atlantic Canada spend more on cosmetics than other areas of the country, followed by Alberta and Ontario. In the States, the biggest spenders on cosmetics are not places by New York and Los Angeles, but Phoenix, Houston and Minneapolis. Boston and Baltimore spend the least per capita.
• The Canadian province that spends the most on lotteries is Quebec, followed by Ontario. In the US, little Rhode Island is the top spender on lotteries per capita, and South Dakota ranks number two. North Dakota, on the other hand, although just next door, spends the least in America.
• The two Canadian cities that spend the most on their dogs, Regina and Saskatoon, are both in Saskatchewan. Kitchener, Ontario spends the most on cats. But Canadians in general spend much more on dogs than the they do on cats, from memory foam bedding to doggie hiking boots, jackets and sweaters to jewelled collars to Halloween costumes to canine hydrotherapy. In America, the biggest dog spenders are found in Phoenix, and then Cleveland.
• Vancouver spends more on books than any other city in Canada, followed by Calgary and Saskatoon, although Saskatoon buys more books by Canadian authors. Calgary buys the most e-books, followed by Regina and ... Saskatoon. In the USA, Seattle (just down the road from Vancouver, is the biggest book-buying city, followed by San Francisco and Philadelphia. Miami buys the least books.
• The recent Ashley Madison hack provided the information that Toronto (pop. around 3 million) had the most marriage cheaters in Canada. Perhaps no surprise there, although it also ranked number four on the list internationally. Second on the list in Canada, though, was Lloydminster, Alberta (pop. 24,000). In the USA, the most cheating cities were New York, Houston, Los Angeles and Chicago. The least cheating cities were Atlanta, Philadelphia and, unexpectedly, Las Vegas.
• The Canadian city that buys the most sex toys per capita is little Kentville, Nova Scotia, followed by Colwood, B.C. (which is hardly much bigger), and Fort McMurray, Alberta. The top city for Bondage, Discipline, Submission and Masochism products is Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia (not a million miles from Kentville, and even smaller), followed by Fairview, Alberta, and 100 Mile House, B.C. Much bigger cities like Toronto and Montreal do not even feature in the top 100 of these lists.
• And just a few more random snippets: Atlanta spends 230% above the national average on motorcycles, but 45% below average on men's underwear; Boston spends a staggering 330% more than the national average on alimony payments; Detroit spends the most per capita on both dating services and GPS systems; Cleveland spends the most on wigs; Miami spends significantly less than the norm when it comes to women's underwear.

Sure, these stats probably show that where you live dictates what you buy. But, more than anything else, they show just how random the whole thing is. Big Data can get as big as it likes, but just what are we supposed to make of data like this?

The status of women - progress and stagnation

In recognition of International Women's Day, the Globe and Mail has produced a spread on the status of women in different areas of the struggle for equality, and Canada's showing leaves much to be desired. We pride ourselves on being inclusive and egalitarian, but that is not really how the comparative numbers show us, and not all of this can be blamed on ten years of Tory mismanagement.
In the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index - a sort of combined index of all sorts of different factors, which essentially constitutes a list of the best places to be a women in today's world - Canada languishes back in 30th place (albeit out of a field of 144). This is a substantial worsening from 2014's ranking of 19th, even if the country's actual "score" is not significantly lower, suggesting that other countries are improving their conditions while Canada is not - we getting left behind. The main areas of concern leading to Canada's poor ranking are the male-female wage gap, and the proportion of female politicians.
As has been the case for several years now, the best performers are Iceland followed by the usual Scandinavian trio of Norway, Finland and Sweden. So, in general, Scandinavia is the best place to be a woman. Then things get a bit less predictable with countries like Ireland, Rwanda and the Philippines rounding out the top 7, and then some somewhat more predictable candidates like Switzerland, Slovenia and New Zealand.
A bunch of other metrics from various other sources collected together in the same Globe report makes quite interesting reading:

• Iceland is also the safest place to have a baby, with a tiny infant mortality rate, as well as having the lowest mortality rate for children under five years of age.
• Estonia is the country with the longest paid parental leave (3 years, fully paid for the first 435 days, partially thereafter, compared to Canada's one year, partially paid, and zero in the USA). Korea and Japan offer a year's paid leave to new fathers (Canada zero).
• Slovenia and Denmark are the countries in which men do the most housework and child care. Canadian men's contribution in this area is respectable but not exceptional.
• The country in which it is considered safest to be a women is Singapore, although Singapore's percentage of women reporting domestic violence over their lifetime is very similar to Canada’s (about 6%). This is, however, a metric notoriously open to cultural skewing - Sweden and Denmark, for example, countries known for their progressiveness and gender equality, have the highest reported domestic violence rates in Europe, but this is mainly because women feel more comfortable coming forward to report such crimes there.
• New Zealand has the smallest gender wage gap among OECD countries, with Kiwi women earning just 5.6% less than men on average. This is the area where Canada performs worst, ranking 28th out of 34 (with an 18.97% wage disparity), with only Turkey, Netherlands, Israel, Japan, Estonia and Korea ranking lower. Statistics Canada put the Canadian gender wage gap even higher at around 26.5%, although there are various different ways the stat can be calculated.
• Canada may now have a 50% female cabinet, but Finland beats that handily with 63%. However, in the House of Commons as a whole, female MPs make up only a paltry 26% in Canada, below the UN goal of 30%, and well below the case of Rwanda where women make up 64% of the national parliament.
• Iceland wins again in the category of most female board members, with women holding 44% of the seats on boards of publicly-traded companies, well ahead of Norway's 36%. Canada appears in the middle of the pack with around 20%, but still substantially better than Japan's embarrassing 3%.
• Portugal has the highest share of women inventors (18%), and Greece has the highest percentage of female entrepreneurs. Canada performs poorly in both of these metrics.
• China is home to the richest self-made woman, as well as to about two-thirds of all the self-made female billionaires in the world. China has three times the number of female billionaires in the USA, even though the USA has about twice as many billionaires of any gender as China.
• South Korea has the highest percentage of university-educated women between the ages of 25 and 32 (millennials), with 72% compared to Canada's 67%. Women in both countries far outstrip their male counterparts.
• Women make up 67% of the doctoral-level mathematicians in Estonia, as compared to less than 25% in Canada. Nearly 70% of students graduating with a degree in computing in Colombia are women; the equivalent statistic in Canada is just 17%.

Some of these statistics may well be cherry-picked for effect to some extent. But it does seem clear that Canada cannot rest on its laurels as regards its treatment of women, and much work still remains to be done.

Fludd is an early gem from Hilary Mantel

Long before Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, and long before the best-seller lists and the international literary prize circuit, Hilary Mantel (now Dame Hilary) wrote a book called Fludd.
Writing back in 1989, Mantel (who hails from my own neck of the woods, in northern Derbyshire) sets the book in a dreary northern English mill town in the 1950s, a milieu instantly familiar to me, but one that is nonetheless sketched out in insightful and almost derisory detail by Mantel. The short novel (a slim but compact 186 pages) also deals with the fading but still self-indulgent Catholic Church, represented here by the hapless and faithless old Father Angwin, the brash and bullying Bishop, the bitter and flirtatious Mother Perpetua, and the earthy, restless young Sister Philomena. Into this mix arrives the mysterious Fludd, ostensibly to act as Father Angwin's curate, but whose short visit in fact succeeds in shaking up most of the sleepy little town and its religious bourgeoisie.
Out of this base material, Mantel crafts a kind of low-key, northern English, magical realist novel, brimful of wry humour and pithy, cutting observations on the everyday world. To give just a few representative examples from the early part of the book:

"It will not do to call them lavatories, for there was no provision to wash. To wash would have been thought an affectation."

" 'They have an Orange Lodge. They are all in it, Catholics too. They have firework parties in Netherhoughton. Ox-roasts. They play football with human heads.'
" 'At some point you exaggerate,' the Bishop said. 'I am not sure at which.' "

"Then he [Father Angwin] remembered that he did not believe in God, and he went into the church to supervise the removal of the statues from their plinths."

"After the concluding prayers the other Children were at liberty to go to the school hall to conduct the social part of their business: strong tea, parlour games, and character assassination."

This is not a laugh-out-loud slap-the-thighs comedy, though. It is a taut and melancholy little novella, peppered with enough dark wit to cause many a wry upturn of the mouth at a well-turned phrase or an unexpected epithet. Fludd is painted on a much smaller canvas than her better-known Cromwell novels, but it is nevertheless sharply-etched and incisive, and a thorough pleasure to read.

French immersion is not for everyone

An interesting conundrum is arising in Canadian education circles. French immersion teaching is becoming so popular in some areas that school boards are finding it difficult to keep the English stream going.
Canada-wide, French immersion (where all lessons are taught in French, rather than French being just one class among many) has increased by around 40% over the last decade. Even in traditional hold-outs against French influence like British Columbia and Alberta, enrollment in French immersion has grown by 18% and 12% respectively over the last five years.
French immersion is being increasingly seen as the mark of a good education. Which all sounds well and good, but it is also being seen as a way of selectively streaming brighter and high-achieving kids with others of their ilk, to the extent that the traditional English stream in some areas is becoming regarded as exclusively for low-achievers and special needs kids. The trend also carries with it its own momentum, so that parents feel increasing pressure to have their kids in the "good" stream, whether or not it actually is good for their particular child, and there is an increasing stigma associated with having a child in the English stream.
In Halton District - a leafy, affluent commuter town outside Toronto, an area full of well-heeled, well-educated, over-achieving young parents with school-age kids - this phenomenon is approaching crisis proportions. In many Halton schools, the French immersion enrollment vastly outnumbers those in the regular English program. In Grade 1, some schools are seeing French-English ratios like 53-4, 31-2, 60-8, etc. This is often necessitating split or joint classes of different grades for Engliosh program kids (which has its own set of pros and cons), or even bussing them to other schools (which has very few pros). Some schools are trying to stem the tide by offering core French classes starting in Grade 1 rather than Grade 4 (I confess I have never understood why the Ontario curriculum waits until Grade 4 to start basic French), but really these are desperate measures, not cogent solutions.
I'm kind of glad our university-age daughter is past this stage. We did consider French immersion for her briefly, back in the day, but it was our daughter herself (a pretty high-achiever, with a facility for languages) who balked at the idea. She was worried, as were we, that she might have problems keeping up in other subjects, or that what she learned in other subjects might be dumbed down in some way. At the ripe old age of 20, she has no regrets about not going down the French immersion route. It does worry me, though, that education is subject to these kinds of fashion trends.

How did the Republican Party get into this fix?

I seem to be writing more about the American presidential nominations than anything else at the moment, but it is undeniably fascinating, albeit in much the same way as a slow-motion train crash is fascinating.
To read the thinking media, particularly the Canadian media, one gets the impresssion that almost everyone, including what is usually referred to as the "traditional" wing or the "establishment" of the Republican Party, is against Donald Trump achieving control of the GOP.
Attitudes range from distaste to indignation to outright fear or incomprehension. But hardly anyone has a good word to say about the man, save a few fellow outliers like Sarah Palin and Chris Christie. And yet, Mr. Trump remains far and away the candidate to catch in the Republican nomination primaries.
So, how does that work? Who are these people who are in the process of voting Trump into a position of huge power and influence?
A brief perusal of the Vote Smart Government 101 web page on presidential primaries reveals that this is actually far from simple, and varies significantly from state to state. Some states use a caucus systems, most use primaries, some even use a hybrid of the two; some of these primaries may be closed, some open, some blanket; some ballots show the candidate's name, some just the name of a delegate who may or may not represent a candidate; some states award delegates on a winner-takes-all basis, some on a proportional basis. Quite honestly, it is a bureaucratic nightmare of a system, making results almost impossible to predict, and, in my view, rendering the whole thing of frankly dubious democratic value.
But the short answer to the question is that the people voting for Trump are Republican voters who have registered with the party, essentially party members. Of course, even how to become a registered voter seems to vary from state to state, but typically it is not particularly onerous and does not cost any money, so any Tom, Dick or Harry with a political bent can get themselves a vote in the process, which I guess is all as it should be.
But these people seem to be distinctly at odds with "establishment" Republicans. There are signs that many stalwart Republicans will actually vote Democratic for the first time ever rather than vote for the GOP with Trump at the helm, fully realizing that this may hand Hillary Clinton the presidency, and even swing the Supreme Court membership towards the Democrats for years to come. They would prefer to vote against the Republican Party than to vote for Donald Trump - there ia a whole movement building under the Twitter hashtag #NeverTrump - and many would admit that the GOP as a whole is in some kind of existential crisis or limbo at the moment.
Why, then, are so many willing to vote for Trump, despite his obvious failings in some of the most important requirements of the job, and despite repeated warnings from prominent Republicans and media outlets?
This is not easy to answer, partly because Mr. Trump's support does not necessarily follow logic. For example, it turns out that Donald Trump is the candidate of choice among Muslim Republicans, despite his prominent anti-Muslim platform! Indeed, if you read some of the reasons people give for supporting Trump, most of them make very little sense, or at least bear little relationship to reality (many of these people are, I fear, not particularly well-educated).
But what comes through most is a general feeling of disillusionment with the status quo, an impatience with political correctness in all its forms, a bold defiance of orthodoxy (to a fault), an underlying fear of immigration and diversity in general, and an undercurrent of respect for a self-made businessman (whatever you might think of Trump's achievements in that area). He represents for many the image of a strong, authoritarian figure, one that is willing to tell it like it is, in simplistic terms, and without concern either for anyone who might be offended, or for his own political masters. That may be all there is to it; policies and thought processes are very much secondary, or even just plain redundant.
Trump supporters tend to be relatively poorly-educated, working class, white, male and older, people who feel they have been let down and left behind by the new realities of 21st century, multi-racial progressive America in a globalized world. Paradoxically, these people would be better served by the Democratic Party, which is committed to reducing income inequality, expanding healthcare, etc. But, crucially, these are people whose deep-seated racism and nativism outweighs more logical economic and political reasoning. Mr. Trump is the only "mainstream" politician willing to pander to these instincts.
Whatever your opinion of Donald Trump, these are heady days indeed for political pundits, and the Internet is a-buzz with comments of all political stripes, some guarded, some not so much. But it remains to be seen how the whole thing - both the nominations, and the subsequent presidential vote - will play out. Who knows, it may have the very positive effect of a short sharp shock to wake up the American electorate, but let's all hope that we don't have to actually live through a Trump presidency for that effect to become apparent.